1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a sewing machine operating device which is connected to a sewing machine body to work the sewing machine according to an action of user's foot and a sewing machine provided with the operating device.
2. Related Art
Conventional sewing machines include a type in which a user connects a foot pedal to a sewing machine and operates the foot pedal with his/her foot, more specifically, the user presses the foot pedal to instruct start or stop of a sewing operation and adjustment of a sewing speed or a rotational speed of a sewing machine motor without use of his/her hands.
Recently, furthermore, an operating device provided with a switch has been proposed. The switch is operated by user's foot in order that an operation to move a presser foot upward may be instructed or a thread cutting operation may be instructed. In this case, the aforementioned switch is disposed lateral to the foot pedal and includes an operating member such as a push button or a lever. The user operates the operating member by one side of his/her foot.
In the foregoing construction, however, the user needs to rotatively move or swing his/her toe in the right-left direction while slightly floating the toe from the foot pedal. This is not necessarily an easy operation for the user. Furthermore, users differ in their feet sizes, particularly in feet widths. However, the sizes of feet have not been considered. Accordingly, there have been sometimes cases in which the operability has been reduced, depending upon the size of the foot.